XP INSTALLATION Dell Inspiron
Hey guys, I have a question I'm hoping somebody can help me out here.
I purchased a Dell Inspiron 9400 or E1705, It's pretty much turn key but it does need some TLC, a hard drive and a battery.
I installed a HDD with a preloaded copy of Windows Media center Edition 2005 that matches the service sticker on the bottom of the machine.
It runs fine and I was able to get some of the drivers installed, but I'm having trouble with the audio. Can't seem to get any sound drivers to load (more on that later)
I figured it'd be a good idea to start with a fresh install, so I grabbed my HP Compaq branded Windows XP MCE 2005 disk That has never let me down, I set up BIOS to boot from the disk, but I cannot get the machine to boot from any disk. I verified that the drive works as it can read CDs when its running on OS.
But each time I attempt to get at the boot from a media installation CD, it skips straight over it and into OS.
I tried a USB powered dvd drive, same results.. like it waits for a CD to load but then skips it and go straight to the OS. I tried to reset all the settings in the BIOS to default settings and I still get the same results
what can I do?
(For that audio driver issue, I cannot get it to load a proper driver from the Dell website or from the weird Microsoft UAA bus controller or whatever it is at my SDI drivers CD discovered,
I had audio come out of it after that, but it prompted me to restart immediately and it even played the logging off sound, but it never came back.. I tried to reinstall those drivers, deleted them, etc.. but nothing worked so far)
Should I just go get a blank hard drive and try it? Is there a setting in a BIOS that needs to be looked? is Dell very finicky or picky on what software you install? How screwed am I here?
I was really looking forward to this machine and the seller does not accept any returns.